YouthREP tackles Holocaust play

"In no way," concurs the play's director, Jarrad Nunes. " 'And Then They Came for Me' lasts only an hour," he continues. "But it packs a wallop."

Indeed.

Although subtitled "Remembering the World of Anne Frank," the work is not about the 14-year-old writer's last months before her death in Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp, in 1945.

"And Then They Came for Me," by James Still, is the third production of New Bedford YouthREP, a local theatrical company headed by Mr. Nunes. The play will be put on at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Keith Middle School, 225 Hathaway Blvd. These performances are open to the general public.

Two additional performances will be given, at 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. Friday, for 1,250 New Bedford eighth graders.

And some eighth graders have helped defray YouthREP's production costs. For instance, Sue Souza's pupils at Keith Middle School recently held a fund-raiser. "They sent us a check for $500," reports Mr. Nunes.

YouthREP is also beholden to New Bedford Public Schools for donating the theater at Keith Middle School and for providing buses to get the students to Keith.

In an unusual move, New Bedford YouthREP will also take the production to West Yarmouth for two general public performances on Oct. 18 and 19th. On the morning of Oct. 17, the show will be performed for 850 seventh and eighth graders from West Yarmouth and Dennis.

Ryan Cooper, one of the show's three producers, explains why performances have been geared to adolescents: "If young people learn about the past, the past won't be repeated in the future."

"And Then They Came for Me" is a unique multimedia play that combines videotaped interviews (projected on a 20-by-12-foot theater screen) with real life Holocaust survivors Ed Silverberg (who, incidentally, was Anne Frank's first boyfriend) and Eva Schloss.

After the war, Eva's mother, Mutti, married Anne's widowed father, Otto Frank, thus making Eva a stepsister to Anne Frank.

Four young actors, working with modular set pieces of windows with broken glass reminiscent of Kristallnacht, recreate scenes from the World War II lives of Mr. Silverberg and Mrs. Schloss.

Anne Frank is not forgotten in the play.

"She makes a couple of cameo appearances," says Mr. Nunes. "Anne Frank's name in the subtitle is a way of reminding the audience of the play's time period. The drama is really about Ed and Eva's stories."

How did Mr. Still, a film and television writer as well as a playwright, and a Los Angeles resident, come into contact with Mr. Silverberg and Mrs. Schloss?

First of all, Mr. Still, in planning his new play, knew he needed two Holocaust survivors — a man and a woman.

Here's how he found them.

In the mid-1990s, "The Diary of Anna Frank" was put on by the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J. Says Mr. Still, "I was there because the show dovetailed with a commission I had with the theater to write a play about the Holocaust."

"Ed Silverberg, now 83, came to see 'Diary,' " Mr. Still continues. "He had never read the book, or seen the play. Or the movie. He had purposely avoided them."

"I don't know how, but, one day, word got out that Ed, Anna's first boyfriend, was at a performance.The kids in the house started carrying on like Ed was a rock star."

Mr. Still learned that Mr. Silverberg had always been silent about his Holocaust experiences. (In fact, he had kept the whole thing so secret that not even his daughters knew.) But after Mr. Still outlined his play idea to Ed — the taping of actual Holocaust survivors whose experiences would be acted out, on stage, by young actors — eventually, Mr. Silverberg warmed to the idea.

For a woman, Mr. Still learned, through the Anne Frank Center in New York, that one Eva Schloss lived in London. Further, they put Mr. Still in touch with her.

A former photographer, Eva, like Ed Silverberg, had long kept silent about her nine months in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

"She felt that her experiences were no worse than anyone else's," Mr. Still recalls. "So she put them away."

Mr. Still goes on: "Then, in the 1990s, Eva was at a function where the discussion was World War II. Someone turned to Eva and said, 'What about you, Eva? Do you have any memories of the Holocaust?' And Eva talked for an hour straight, uttering things she hadn't said aloud for years.

"Eva later turned that experience into a passion for advocacy and education. And, to this day, she's deeply involved in education about the Holocaust."

Next, the threesome — Mr. Silverberg, Mrs. Schloss and Mr. Still — gathered at a sound studio at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "I didn't want them to memorize anything or read from cue cards," says Mr. Still.

"I was off-stage asking them questions. I made every attempt not to control what they said or how they said it. Finally, I had five or six hours of tape, so I hired a film editor to cut it."

The finished product is a heart-rending record of enormous cruelty and shining courage. As Charles Epstein, WICR Radio, Indianapolis, put it: "It's like an historical newsreel brought to life on the stage. It works."

Mrs. Schloss (she married Zvi Schloss after the war) will travel from her London home to make an appearance in New Bedford and answer questions from the audience. It's an assignment Mrs. Schloss has taken on before.

Says Mr. Cooper, "Eva travels to the United States as least three time a year, paying her own expenses. "She comes if she can."

She appeared after a performance in her adopted London where the play was performed at the Houses of Parliament by an all-black cast. Mr. Cooper was there and impressed. He says, "It was the best performance of the play that I had ever seen."

Worldwide, the play has had hundreds of performances. There are many plays about the Holocaust, but few as powerful as this one. Ed and Eva's insightful messages remind us that life is precious and fragile.

Cast members, who assume various roles throughout the play, include Erica Borges, Peter-Henry DaSilva, Rosemary Larkin and Nate Valente. The set was designed and constructed by Bob Long, with lighting by Dave Leonard.

The play's producers are Mr. Cooper, Betty Ann Lauria, and Cindy Yoken in association with the Jewish Federation of Greater New Bedford, Holocaust Education Committee.

Tickets for the public performances and $15 for adults and $10 for seniors and students. For reservations, call (508) 207-7956.